Johann Sebastian Bach

Zhu Xiao-Mei occupies a place all her own in today’s musical world. Deliberately keeping her concerts few and far between, she appears in public only to perform especially demanding works, ‘mountains of the soul’ which she judges essential, in interpretations matured over a long period of gestation, taking music to the most varied audiences in places that appeal to her and where she enjoys playing. But though she is nowadays the guest of the leading concert halls and the most prestigious festivals, from the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris to the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, from the Festival de La Roque d’Anthéron to La Folle Journée in Nantes, Bilbao and Tokyo, her career very nearly never took place at all.

The “Clavierübung” (keyboard practice) … composed for Music-Lovers for the refreshment of their Spirits” - thus the complete edition of the six “Partitas” from 1731, was published by Bach at his own expense to establish as a keyboard composer. It is the culmination of the traditional suite with it’s canon of various dances by Italian and French models and transcends them becoming a German, contrapuntally reflected form.

Chen plays two movements after the respective sarabandes (Partitas IV and VI). This is based on the research of Kenneth Gilbert, who argued that the previous reverse order has been practised due to printing at that time having regard to turning the pages.

Pi-hsien Chen was born in Taiwan and studied with Hans Leygraf at the Musikhochschule Hannover, going on to take master classes with Tatjana Nikolajewa, Geza Anda, Wilhelm Kempff and Claudio Arrau. She won the first prize of the ARD-International-Piano-competition in Munich at the age of 21, later also of the Schoenberg in Rotterdam and of the Bach-Competition in Washington. She has performed with the London Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Zürich Tonhalle-Orchestra and almost all German Radio-Symphony-Orchestras. Bernard Haitink, Paul Sacher, Sir Colin Davis, Charles Dutoit, Marek Janowsky, Hans Zender and Peter Eötvös are amongst the conductors she has performed with.

This 9-CD boxed set of first releases from the RIAS archives presents the first ever attempt at a recording of the complete Bach cantatas.

For everyone who is interested in the history of Bach interpretation and in the development of Germany’s post-1945 cultural rebuilding, these recordings represent a significant enrichment. From 1946, Karl Ristenpart established choral and orchestral ensembles at the RIAS Berlin, directing the RIAS Kammerchor and the RIAS Kammerorchester. With these ensembles, and emerging young singers (including Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Helmut Krebs and Agnes Giebel), Karl Ristenpart and Elsa Schiller, then head of music at the RIAS, embarked in 1947 upon a recording series of the complete Bach cantatas. However, it proved impossible to realise the project in its entirety. The 29 cantatas which survive in the RIAS archives document a Bach ideal which is pioneering even by today’s standards: thanks to small-scale forces the musical structures are distinct and transparent, and the singers link their articulation to that of the instrumentalists.This interpretation, which is free of any monumentalism, paved the way, aesthetically, for historically informed performance practice.